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To the day one year ago, Leslie's (Callie Stephens) boyfriend (Nick
Bastounes) has been killed by a bunch of unknown psychos - so to not be
alone on that day, Leslie has invited a few friends (Emily Bennett, Summer
Bills, Jonathan Helvey, Danny Miller) over to her parents' (Bill Moseley,
Leslie Easterbrook) house (the parents are out that night) just so she
doesn't have to be alone with her memories. It's mostly a sob-fest though,
until two violent and totally ruthless home invaders (Allan Kayser, David
Willis) violently enter the premises, kill the guys and rape the girls -
only Leslie somehow seems to be able to evade them and everytime they are
about to capture her she puts up a good fight. Finally, the baddies think
they have cornered her in her father's sanctuary, the basement ... but
hard-boiled as they may be, they can't help but feeling there's something
odd about the place, and when Leslie's parents return with a few masked
associates ... well, without giving too much away, I have to say the film
isn't called House of the Witchdoctor for nothing ... House
of the Witchdoctor is a fun little movie because it really knows how
to play with horror clichées and thus with audience expectations, as it
starts out like your typical home invasion/torture porn movie - and a
well-made one at that, with all the suspense, shocks and gruesome scenes
in all the right places -, but once you've gotten the feeling you've seen
it all before, it turns into something entirely different, without
betraying it's narrative, just breaking with the formula. But as a whole,
the film is really well-made and well-played, and all the violence is
well-placed and explicit enough without being just gratuitous, so for any
genre fan able to think a little outside of formulas, this is one to
really enjoy!
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